In Australia right now, it's all about gangsters. Underbelly continues its dominance on the Australian TV ratings ladder. And the attention that the media is bestowing on bikie gangs is bordering on the obsessive.

Over the course of his career, Clive Small, one of NSW's most successful detectives, saw it all. His book, Smack Express: How Organised Crime got Hooked on Drugs is an insight into drug trafficking and organised crime on Australia's east coast. Written with journalist Tom Gilling, it features an extraordinary range of colourful characters and situations.

Take "Aunty", the female drug lord who has been successfully importing kilos of cocaine into Australia for decades. Or the bloke who thought that throwing someone into the boot of a car and driving it to South Australia wasn't kidnapping, because "he never asked to get out of the boot".

Tom Gilling

Tom Gilling is a former journalist and author. He has written a number of novels and co-authored The Bagman: Final Confessions of Jack Herbert, about a corrupt Queensland policeman whose evidence in the 1980s Fitzgerald Inquiry had a huge impact on Queensland.

Clive Small

Clive Small is a former Assistant Commissioner of Police in NSW, and a former ICAC chief investigator. He resigned from ICAC in 2007 to pursue a defamation case against broadcaster Alan Jones.
His investigations included the death of Griffith anti-drugs campaigner Donald McKay, the assassination of Cabramatta MP John Newman and the backpacker murders of Ivan Milat.